


Redame

by magicasen



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Background Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Bittersweet Ending, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Hanahaki Disease, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23521339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicasen/pseuds/magicasen
Summary: When he finally spits into the trash, he doesn’t understand what he’s looking at. Had he managed to swallow a piece of paper without realizing? It’s wet and disgusting, but curiosity gets the better of him as he picks it up gingerly between his fingers. It’s a flower petal, he realizes abruptly, rubbing it carefully as it rolls up and finally crumples between his fingers.Like losing half the world wasn't enough, Steve's body also begins to rebel against his love for Tony.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 34
Kudos: 183





	Redame

**Author's Note:**

> I accomplished my goal of getting this out before the 1-year anniversary of Endgame! 
> 
> A little primer on [Hanahaki disease](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Hanahaki_Disease) for anyone not in the know. Although this fic turned from a hanahaki fic to a Endgame Steve character study, hmm hmm. 
> 
> Thank you so much to ishipallthings and nostalgicatsea for all the brainstorming and cheerleading! And thanks so much to ishipallthings for the very helpful beta! 
> 
> Also, thanks [Merriam-Webster](https://twitter.com/merriamwebster/status/1244712033079177217) for the title! ;)
> 
> If you'd like to know the nature of the CNTW, see the endnotes.

The arc reactor in the palm of Steve’s hand might be heavier than the weight on his shoulders after failing the universe. It’s a cruel comparison, but there’s a wall erected in his mind, circling around the facts of the matter. Thanos won, Thanos used the Stones, and half of the universe was snapped out of existence. Steve hasn’t even scaled the mental barrier of waking up in the future yet. He doesn’t know how long it’ll take to accept this.

So he’s here, handling the arc reactor with more care than he’s ever afforded Tony Stark. He thinks of words he wrote once to Tony, about how Steve’s always placed his faith in people. Individuals. In Steve’s mind, Tony’s diametrically opposed to him in so many ways, so why not here? Tony’s someone who’s smart and capable. He can trust himself. He doesn’t need to place trust in individuals. Tony doesn’t need to place trust in Steve.

Just another thing to be wrong about.

The light of the reactor glows bright and unyielding. The Avengers took the opportunity to get Tony to rest after his collapse, so he’s remained in bed with the aid of anesthesia. Maybe it’s for the better. Tony would be furious if he knew about the Avengers going after Thanos, but neither would he hesitate to throw himself behind the plan. No matter how much he said he couldn’t help, not anymore, Steve knows Tony, knows that their team is only stronger with him on it.

Tony told Steve that Steve wasn’t with him for Thanos, but that wouldn’t have made a lick of difference. Tony doesn’t need them. No, they need Tony. Steve wishes he could tell him that, but he doesn’t want to know what else Tony can throw at him now. The arc reactor is his armor. The arc reactor is his heart. What else is there left for him to give?

Steve closes his eyes and brings the arc reactor in close, next to his chest. There’s an itchiness in his throat, and Steve thumps his chest as he coughs. The uncomfortable prickling grows, and Steve heaves another dry cough, resorting to gripping his throat as he feels whatever it is begin to dislodge.

Steve rushes to the nearest trash can, ready to cough up the phlegm. It’s painful as it comes up, scratching against his throat and leaving a burn behind. When he finally spits it into the trash, he doesn’t understand what he’s looking at. Had he managed to swallow a piece of paper without realizing? It’s wet and disgusting, but curiosity gets the better of him as he picks it up gingerly between his fingers. It’s a flower petal, he realizes abruptly, rubbing it carefully as it rolls up and finally crumples between his fingers.

He lifts his other hand, uncurling his fingers to look at the arc reactor again. The light hasn’t given out.

* * *

The Avengers return from their mission, but there’s no home left for them.

There’s no outbursts at the debriefing this around, just a mutual partaking of their quiet, suffocating dread. Tony leaves the room first. Steve is so disoriented by the rush of relief in his chest that he doesn’t try to stop him. Later, he wonders what he’d have done if he’d known the exit was permanent.

The team drifts apart, turn-by-turn. Carol, Nebula, and Rocket return to space. Rhodey’s needed by the government. Bruce disappears. Thor wanders off. Then it’s Steve and Natasha left, and when Natasha turns to him, talking about aiding relief efforts, the itch in Steve’s throat is unbearable, and he rubs at it with his fingers. Natasha’s expression smooths out with a slight nod and reluctant acceptance.

Steve leaves too, but he can’t escape the constant irritation. Cough suppressants don’t work on him, plus he nearly gags the first time he drinks the syrup. It doesn’t taste much better than it did a century ago. He grows his beard back. No one can line up the dots between the sickly, bearded man who flits along town to town and Captain America. It’s not like the name means much nowadays, other than being the subject of an increasing number of defaced statues.

Before Thanos, he might have tried a bar, one of the few places a single man would have been found and left alone, drowning out his sorrows. After Thanos, no one bats an eye at another run-down man reflecting the state of their world. There’s only so much the heart can take, and in these times, people reach to their few loved ones remaining, or to the people whose desperate loneliness drive them to band together with anyone for basic human companionship. Those people who aren’t willing to be helped are the ones who fall through the cracks.

Steve tries out the words to himself, in one of the motel rooms that still charge money and he still insists on paying for, when there are entire neighborhoods of abandoned houses with their broken windows and ajar doors for travelers needing a place to stay, or food to eat.

 _I love Tony,_ he says, and his chest aches in a way that’s not physical. _I love Tony, and he doesn’t love me back._ That one rings true.

It hadn’t hurt when the Avengers had been a team. It hadn’t hurt in the two years after Siberia, when they were a empty husk mostly driven by hope that one day they’d be whole again. Steve wonders why it’s only now, after so much death and destruction, that his body decides that the heartbreak is too much to handle after all, and succumbs to disease.

Steve’s only been in love once before, and whatever he feels now is nothing like then. His love isn’t neatly wrapped. His love doesn’t bring him simple, pure happiness, but a sense of curiosity and wonder mixed with trepidation. His love feels just like the future itself, a point he’d slowly, barely accepted years after he’d woken up, before half of it disappeared for good.

He tries alcohol again, but it’s too much seeing everyone else in the same rooms, in the same places, having the same ideas. Thinking of Bucky, and Sam, and Wanda, and everyone else who’d disappeared into dust before his eyes is too much. Grieving for Tony alongside rows of lost men feels like too much. So he tries to grieve for Peggy instead, but then he finds himself in the bathroom, coughing up scads of daffodils.

* * *

Natasha finds out when Steve comes back to the compound, six months after he first left. He’s not planning to stay. He’s made use of his phone for the first time in months, calling in favors he used to be too proud for, to get a place in DC. Regardless, she’s the one person who’s willing to stay put, and he thinks it’s for the team. For a place to come home to, if they wish. So he owes it to her to visit, once in a while.

They’re sharing a single peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and Steve gets up to go to the kitchen to see if there’s any sort of protein.

The fridge and pantry are completely stocked. Steve tries to imagine Natasha making grocery runs fit to feed an army.

“The shipments didn’t start coming until a few weeks after--” Natasha doesn’t need to point out what. “Every Thursday. There used to be more, but I made a note that most of it, especially the perishables, would be better directed to other sources. Even after that, it’s still way too much for me, though.”

“I’ve seen how much you can pack away.”

“That’s not very nice, Steve.” Natasha purses her lips to smother the sudden, unexpected smile. “But well, maybe a girl’s got more appetite when she’s got things to do.” Like coordinating a worldwide aid effort didn’t count as enough. “Not that telling Tony that would make any difference. To him, he’ll always be feeding a team of superhumans.”

A wave of pure, startled fondness washes over Steve. His heart pounds, even as his throat constricts. “That was mostly me,” he admits. “It’s not like Vision could really eat. And Wanda never got used to having access to whatever food she wanted, I think.”

“Sam, though. He could rival you.”

“If that’s what made him feel better,” Steve laughs.

Both of them study the fully-stocked fridge, and Steve understands why Natasha stuck to her simple sandwiches most of the time.

“What about some spaghetti and meatballs?” Steve finally asks.

Half an hour later, after Natasha makes a comment about Tony’s wedding, the one that Steve hadn’t even bothered checking if he’d been invited to, he’s heaving mouthfuls of spaghetti into the trash can.

It’s not just food though. Natasha’s hand on his back turns into a tight grip as petal after petal splatters with the red of the tomato sauce.

“Sorry,” he says, smiling weakly at Natasha. “I really shouldn’t have offered to cook for us.”

Natasha doesn’t respond, and Steve doesn’t know how she feels about him not telling her. But he knows how she feels about herself.

Steve doesn’t know the last time someone’s shown concern for him like this. After Thanos, they’d been so numb and caught up in their own worlds. It should have been him, to check on others, but he’d been so caught up in his own failures. His own heartbreak.

“How long has this been going on?” she asks him. “It can’t have been before the Snap,” she tells him. “Was it, someone who’s gone? Steve, you stubborn son of a bitch, you know you can’t live like this. If you really do you have it—” Natasha’s eyes are pleading. Steve figures they’re past the point of trying to paint the flowers coming up from his lungs are just a misunderstanding. His lies have always been worthless to her.

Steve can read the words hidden between the lines. _I can’t lose anyone else._

“It’s not. Don’t worry, Nat, it’s not.”

“Don’t worry. One of my friends is dying, and you’re going to tell me to _not worry.”_ Her voice goes hoarse, and she glances away. They’ve spent half the afternoon together, but her eyes are still red-rimmed. How many tears did someone have to shed, for that to become their default look?

Steve doesn’t know what to say to her. He thinks any words he has will only make things worse.

“It’s Tony,” she finally says, staring at the wall. “Isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he whispers. The tightness in his chest subsides briefly with the confession.

There’s a sharp inhale, and Natasha fully sits down, propping her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. He thinks this is one more way that he broke Natasha’s heart. She’s so determined to keep their family together, she’s so determined to see him happy. Once, she would have urged him to go after Tony, and confess his feelings. But he sees now, that this is just another way she thinks she’s failed him, and the rest of the Avengers.

She doesn’t apologize to Steve. She doesn’t tell him how to fix this, or mention the surgery.

She just sits next to him, in silence, before curling her hand around his shoulder. He turns, and buries his face into the crook of her neck. He wills himself not to give into the itch in his throat. That’d be distasteful. Natasha wouldn’t mind, but Steve would.

His heart’s been so awash in a gaping expanse of emptiness for so long that even here, where he’s allowed, he can’t shed tears.

* * *

More theories exist on the origins of the hanahaki disease than there are verified cases of it throughout the whole of human history. Those explanations aren’t interested in the _what_ , which is well-documented at this point.

For a minuscule, non-statistically relevant portion of the population, unrequited romantic feelings induce a stress response from the body. In the chest cavity, a seed is formed, and that seed germinates into a flowering plant. The symptoms begin from discomfort and shortness of breath, and as the flower grows, they turn into a worsening cough, chest pain, and at the terminal stages, suffocation.

No, the fascination with hanahaki disease is more focused on the _why._ Generations upon generations of old wives’ tales turned into its own sub-field of philosophy. The evolutionary perspective on hanahaki disease posit that it’s the heart—the soul’s immune system. The disease is symptomatic of the body’s rejection of something dangerous and its attempt to expel it from its system. The danger, of course, being unrequited love. Love can be an inconvenient barrier hampering people’s impulse to reproduce, and none more so, the theory states, than unrequited love. If, by nature, your love will remain unrequited, and your love will be unconsummated, then the body tries to physically get rid of it.

Steve thinks it’s all a load of crap, and he thinks he gets more of a say with his lived experience. The idea that he, out of countless others who’ve experienced unrequited love, is the one to suffer from the disease doesn’t surprise him anymore. His life is a series of improbabilities.

Humanity is always fascinated by tales of tragedy. Of suffering through pain, of chasing something impossible. The beauty of unattainability. It takes a year to reach this point, but Steve doesn’t think of it as sad anymore. As a toll on his body, as beautiful suffering. He doesn’t dwell on the pain, or the sadness.

The good, the warmth, the rightness of the world situated in the exact set of variables of who and why he loves, revealing his self to himself. The clarity makes it worth it.

That fact’s never clearer to Steve than when there’s a video call from Tony to Natasha, of him at the hospital at Pepper’s bedside, a bright red face with its squinted eyes peeking out from the bundle of swaddled cloth. Tony’s beaming. Pepper’s smiling too, a gentler, exhausted one, but Tony is the proudest man in the world. The world’s still capable of beauty, and that’s why Steve’s still here. To protect that.

Tony smiles at Natasha, who offers him the appropriate praises and affirmations that she has his eyes, and his nose, and the sense of being that Tony Stark wholly possesses.

Tony smiles at Steve too, who’s lurking in the background, eyes glued to the screen like a dying man to water, and calls him over. Steve can’t stop himself from smiling back helplessly.

“Congratulations.”

Then Steve excuses himself to the restroom, curling over the toilet bowl and heaving up petals, a bud, and part of a stem, he leans back, resting his head against the wall, and smiling in a pale imitation of the proud smile on Tony’s face. There’s a knock on the door, and he doesn’t want to face Natasha right now. He thinks it might unnerve her more, how this might be the happiest he’s been since…since. It’s happiness, and pride, and…

He’s thankful. For this reminder, of what he can’t have, and the reason why he can’t.

* * *

Years pass. They want Captain America to contribute to the recovery effort somehow, to lend his face to the world’s healing. Steve doesn’t know what he’s done to help, until he sees a flyer for a support group at the VA center. It’s not just for veterans, of course. But when he enters, the entire group turns to face him, and Steve feels a little guilty that he’s taking the spotlight away from others, or from the counselor who’s actually there to help. Steve’s…Steve’s just here to be helped, he thinks. But the others hang onto his every word, no matter how forced or contrived they are. He still doesn’t know how much he can share. He remembers his painful adjustment to the future, where he believed anything he said, any pain he shared, would make others uncomfortable. But then again, keeping his feelings all to himself did the same thing. The few people close to him were concerned with how much he hid away, how little he opened up. But the people at Steve’s first support group, even with his fumbling words, had nodded, affirming with gentle words their shared pain.

After the group finishes, Steve lingers, hands clasped between his knees. The counselor, a man named Jacob, had sat down next to him, asking if there was anything Steve wanted to share personally. Steve coughs, fist closed over his mouth like he’d grown used to in order to avoid the mess.

“I was wondering, actually,” Steve asked, “how you came to be a counselor.”

* * *

Of the rare cases of hanahaki, Steve’s aware he’s an outlier. The life expectancy for those who were diagnosed and refused the surgery was typically four to six months. The longest had been just over a year. But, they also weren’t scientifically enhanced to human perfection. And the people who’d died had been in close proximity with the target of their misplaced love. Co-workers, or close friends. They hadn’t run away like Steve. After all, what type of person would run away from the person they were in love with?

Steve wonders if he has to live the rest of his life like this. If there’s a breaking point, for his body, or for his heart. He lives like someone managing their symptoms, waiting for things to take a turn for the worse.

Then Scott Lang shows up, babbling about quantum realms and the Stones they’d thought were gone for good, and it’s been a long time since he’s tasted hope.

“Steve, are you sure about this?” Natasha asks for the umpteeth time, and Steve’s grip on the steering wheel tightens.

“It’s half the universe, Nat.” _Everyone we lost._ “What else is there to be sure about?”

His eyes fixate on the road ahead. Natasha doesn’t press, but her disappointment at him dodging the question hangs over them like a veil.

She asks like she assumes Steve doesn’t want to see Tony. Well, it’s not like Steve has done anything to discourage that belief. He’s spent the last five years hiding from Tony. Steve’s never heard of a case of hanahaki disease disappearing because the afflicted fell out of love. Maybe he was the first to try. He doubts he’s the first to fail.

But Natasha’s wrong. After five years, and after a glimmer of hope, Steve’s finally accepted what he should have years ago. This isn’t living. This is running away. Even if it hurts, he wants to see Tony, because with Tony he feels like himself. He feels alive. He doesn’t care anymore if he gets punished for wanting to live. He wants to see Tony.

Because life’s just like that, Tony’s outside with his daughter—Morgan—when they pull up into the driveway. Tony doesn’t look happy, and his daughter reflects his expression. God, she’s the spitting image of her father.

Steve’s focused on Tony though, and the part of him that isn’t in pain is singing at the sight. He’s visibly older. Instead of silver at his temples, there are streaks of it in his hair. He’s still as beautiful as ever.

More so, because more than looks, Tony, even with his guarded expression, looks… content. He hauls Morgan up higher as he watches them. Steve had once called Tony’s Earth’s best defender, and he doesn’t deny it anymore. But the sheer protectiveness that emanates from Tony’s action. Steve wouldn’t have thought it’s possible to fall more in love with someone, but he’s proven wrong here. Like his body’s fighting off the swell of emotions, his throat constricts, making it hard to breathe.

If Tony had chosen him, they couldn’t have had this. Steve watches Morgan clinging to Tony. Is there a world, where they could have brought new life like this? Reminding them not just of who they lost, but who they have left to protect? They couldn’t have. Tony’s always been meant to create, to work toward the future. Not to be saddled with someone from the past. This is how it’s meant to be, Steve wonders, while Tony gazes back at him. Only for him, Steve thinks, their eye contact not breaking. For the first time in five years, Steve has Tony’s undivided attention.

Tony doesn’t want to risk not being there for his family. Scott’s getting more and more agitated, and Natasha’s careful to hide the resignation in her voice. But Tony’s obstinate, and nothing they say can get him to change his mind. And can Steve really blame him? Tony had told him once, that this is what he wanted. A farm with Pepper, and Steve had honestly thought he’d meant it as a joke back then. There were so many ways he couldn’t read Tony back then, but that part hadn’t really changed. But here Tony is, a farm with his wife and daughter. He didn’t have that before the Avengers. He probably couldn’t have done that on the Avengers. Isn’t that why Clint had kept retiring from the team?

Tony makes to leave, and Steve can’t see him go. He grabs onto his elbow, and a surge of electricity runs through him. Tony looks at him with wide eyes. Steve wonders if he feels it too. It overrides everything else, the suffocating feeling that threatens to take over every second he spends here. He feels alive, vitalized. His throat is protesting, but he manages to keep his voice even.

“I’m happy for you, I really am.” He’s not lying, but his body punishes him for telling the truth. The entire universe punishes him for wanting to do right, it feels like. He has to stop to gather his breath, as the scratch in his throat becomes unbearable.

“I got my second chance right here, Cap,” Tony says. His daughter clings to him, but Tony doesn’t look away from Steve. Addressing him. Knowing him.

Steve lets his hand drop, like a weight is attached to it, as Tony invites them to stay for food. Steve wants to, he realizes, he wants to spend as much time as he can here, watching Tony be happy and his family adore him. He wants to drown in it.

Natasha comes up next to him and touches his shoulder.

“I have a sanitary bag in the car,” she tells him. “Or there’s a whole forest around here, if you need a moment.”

“No.” Steve wants to say more, but his body is trembling now with the effort to suppress the cough. He just shakes his head again quickly. Natasha glances a look backwards before they hurry away. Natasha’s still looking back as they make their way into the car, but Steve doesn’t need to look up to know that Tony’s watching them rush away. It’s probably not a surprise to Tony to watch them leave, is it?

Natasha keeps Scott outside, talking about their next step of the plan, when Steve scrambles for the bag in the passenger seat, coughing up petals like he hasn’t in years.

When he’s done, he shucks the damned burning leather jacket and wipes his forehead with the back of his head. Second chances, huh? Steve knows, that whatever and however many chances he’s had with Tony, they’re all wasted now.

* * *

After the failed time travel experiment, Steve has to walk away. He’s outside of the compound feeling numb. Not disappointed, not defeated, just…moments away from accepting hopelessness. He thinks that if Sam or Bucky saw him like this, they’d be—he doesn’t want to think about it, because they can’t see him anymore, can they?

Where does someone go, after they lost all their forward momentum? Steve can’t do anything to help. The people who would have been capable of accomplishing the feat had refused, or were lost in the Snap. Steve appreciates Bruce’s attempt, but he should have known it was a shot in the dark. Time travel. If they’d had that all along, that would have solved a lot of things long before, wouldn’t it?

There’s a car engine revving in the distance. Steve grinds his teeth as the sound gets closer. Too close, the compound’s security measures should have kicked in by now.

The Audi slows down near him. Steve’s heart is pounding, but he doesn’t feel ready to fight. He feels like he’s looking over the edge of a cliff as the window rolls down.

The pain of his disease barely registers. Tony, Tony, Tony, his heart sings, drinking in the unexpected sight. Last time this happened, he’d been prepared. He’d been ready to see him, bracing himself, even if seeing Tony had still taken his breath away. His head swims while his body remains stock-still.

Tony’s eyes are hidden behind his sunglasses, but he’s frowning at Steve.

“Why the long face? Let me guess, he turned into a baby.”

Steve swallows thickly, and his throat tightens like he’d forgotten he’d need to carry out a conversation with Tony. “Among other things, yeah. What are you doing here?”

Tony shrugs, telling him about the paradoxes one runs into, when it comes to time travel. Stuff he didn’t bother explaining in detail before to them at the cabin, and a small part of Steve is gratified. Of course, after they left, even after Tony had refused, he’d still dug deeper into the time travel.

Finally, Tony brandishes his accomplishment at Steve.

“A fully functioning time-space GPS.”

The happiness is almost too much to handle. He’s beaming at Tony, who looks carefully composed, even if the pride rolls off him in waves. Even if Tony would never admit it, Steve would. The happiness is so unfamiliar it feels novel. How long has it been since they’ve had this?

“Turns out, resentment is corrosive, and I hate it.”

“Me too.” Steve can’t believe it. Tony’s forgiveness is here, flippantly given, but Steve basks in it.

And then Tony holds out his hand.

If Steve had thought that touching Tony before, through layers of clothing, had been a shock, then this is. This is being hit with the full force of Thor’s lightning. The person he’d been for the past five years, the person who’d been in love hopelessly, endlessly. Whoever that Steve was no longer exists, with the force of their newly formed bond. He can’t take his eyes off Tony when their hands clasp together, and even though Tony’s eyes are hidden behind his sunglasses, he knows Tony is doing the same.

Tony goes to his car, and Steve takes the moment to wipe the saliva away from his mouth. It’s from sheer force of will that he stops his cough, but it’s not like his childhood, with his weak asthmatic body, where no matter how hard he tried to keep down his cough, so to not frighten Ma, he couldn’t help it. He’s sweating, and he adjusts his collar, but his sickness isn’t enough to ruin this moment.

Steve’s stomach swoops when Tony presents the shield to him

“Tony, I don’t know.”

“Why? He made it for you.”

That’s not it, Steve thinks, as Tony continues to deflect. Steve doesn’t deserve the shield. He doesn’t, if he’s quite honest, want the shield anymore. But he’s looking at Tony, and it’s not about what he wants, is it? It’s about what Tony can offer him, and how he deals with that. He’s never taking it for granted again.

Tony slides the shield onto his hand, and Steve’s heart swells.

“Thank you, Tony.”

Tony shuffles. “Will you keep that a little quiet? Didn’t bring one for the whole team. We are getting the whole team, right?”

Steve had been trying. Tony had tried, many years ago, to put the team together on their own. But now that they’re both here, together, Steve has no hesitation in his mind that this time, it’ll work.

“We’re working on that right now.”

* * *

When it was time to assign people to groups, he had exchanged glances with Natasha before she volunteered loudly to brainstorm the stones’ locations with Tony and Bruce. Steve had gone with Scott, much to the other man’s delight.

It’s late when Steve comes into the conference room now and closes the door quietly behind him.

Bruce and Natasha are asleep. Steve knows Natasha’s always been a light sleeper, but she hasn’t stirred through his entrance. They’re turned toward each other, hands outstretched but not far enough to touch.

Tony’s fallen asleep on the table. He’s small enough that his whole body fits, even though he’s flat on his back. Steve holds his breath when he crouches down. Tony’s glasses are skewed, digging into his cheek, bound to leave an indent. Steve pulls the glasses off, and debates on where to put them so that Tony doesn’t wake up in a panic to find them. He tucks an imaginary strand of hair behind Tony’s ear.

He’ll get a crick like this, Steve tells himself, eyes lingering on the silver in his hair. It makes him look distinguished and approachable at the same time. Maybe if the Snap had never happened, and Tony had continued in the same capacity at Stark Industries, he would have dyed it.

He remembers Tony’s hand clasped in his, and the shock that went through his body then. This feeling is different, like Steve can’t breathe. Literally, as he stuffs his mouth against his elbow and his body vibrates with his messy, suppressed cough.

He debates waking Tony and the others up. In theory, they can take their time. But it’s been five years already. The instant they work out the final kinks in their plan, they’re going right for it. It’ll be a few more days at most, and they need their proper rest.

But selfishly, he wants to relish this rare, fleeting moment with Tony all to himself, where he can be honest.

Tony’s head flops back when Steve picks him up. He’s light as a feather--the pressure in Steve’s chest is heavier than the weight of an asleep Tony. If he were awake though, it wouldn’t go this way. He’d be larger with the force of his personality. An awake Tony is a magnet, Steve thinks with a smile. The closer you get, the stronger the pull.

He reaches Tony’s bedroom and carefully removes his shoes before tucking Tony in. Steve lets the rattle in his throat out for once, and the breathy rasp is too loud in the darkness. He jerks out of his trance and stands up.

It’s almost too much to think of another lifetime where this is normal, and it’s a part of their lives that Tony allows Steve to see him as vulnerable.

Isn’t that the premise of what they’re doing with the time travel? Taking from alternate timelines, creating new branches from them. Maybe in one branch out there, Steve Rogers still thinks hanahaki is barely more than a tall tale, because someone—Tony—loves him back.

Steve wonders what went differently there. He wonders what in that other branch is capable of changing him.

* * *

On time heist T-1, Tony declares a party. Someone’s put in charge of the food (Rocket) and now, several hours later, there are stacks of pizza boxes piled high on tables and copious amounts of empty 2-liter soda bottles littering the room.

“One hell of a last meal at the end of the world,” Natasha says as she rips off a piece of crust.

Steve raises an eyebrow. “You’re getting nostalgic for your PB&J?”

“Not a bad trade-off to keep this company,” she says. “And I don’t have to endure any of the Avengers’ cooking skills.”

Steve snorts. “You know, it stings more when you’re the one insulting it instead of me.”

“You can take it, you’re a big boy. Speaking of which, do you really want to spend our last night together making small talk about food?”

“Hey, if you meant to make a move on me, you had a decade to do it.”

Natasha elbows him in the side, and Steve grins. There’s been no shortage of speculation from within SHIELD or the Avengers, but he and Natasha have never been like that. He wouldn’t give up what he has with her for anything.

Natasha picks off some of the olives on her slice and pops them in her mouth. “No thanks. Unlike certain people, I’m not interested in emotionally unavailable men.”

Like that, Steve’s appetite for pineapple pizza is gone.

“Sorry, too far,” Natasha says.

“It’s okay.” Steve doesn’t know how he could have managed for these past few days, being so close to Tony all the time without Natasha here. She’s the only one who knows, and he can’t be grateful enough for her quiet support.

“Have you talked to him at all?” Natasha asks.

“I mean, we’re going to New York together. I’m just being efficient with my time, since you get to go to space without me.”

“It _has_ been a while since me and Clint have gone on a mission with just the two of us.” Natasha’s clearly basking in it, and Steve doesn’t blame either of them for picking each other for their team. “Anyway, a mission isn’t the time for you two to bare your souls to each other.”

Natasha tends to say things like that, and Steve doesn’t get it. The way Natasha talks about the two of them gazing into each other’s eyes, or having deep, soulful conversations, it’s not _them_. For everything Steve feels for Tony, and how charged their words always come across, their conversational topics are perfectly ordinary. He wants to sigh. Maybe what he really doesn’t get is him and Tony.

It doesn’t take much prodding for Steve to polish off his slice and push himself off the edge of the kitchen island. He had caught sight of Tony earlier in the corner, looking at his phone. They’d decided on the teams and they’re both going to 2012, but Natasha’s right. This may be the last time they have a quiet moment together.

Tony’s not where Steve saw him earlier, so he pushes open the nearest door to a meeting room and catches the tail end of Tony’s phone call.

“Everything’s going to work out exactly the way it’s supposed to. I love you 3000.”

Steve very much resents his enhanced hearing, and is about to turn and leave. But then he unthinkingly clears his throat to clear out the tickle, and Tony jumps in his chair.

The flush heats up Steve’s cheeks. “Uh, sorry to interrupt. Were you on a call with your family?”

Tony stands up, pushing his chair away from him.

“No,” Tony says. “I mean, it’s a message, but it’s getting saved until after we head out. I figure sending it now isn’t going to be doing us any favors.”

“Really? You’re not talking to them before you leave?” Steve says. He’s surprised Tony is still here, to be honest, and not with his family.

Tony scoffs, but there’s no heat to it. “I already made a big deal out of my goodbye the first time around when I came to the compound. Said that Daddy’s off to do some Iron Man things and save the world. Morgan was pretty excited about it, all things considered.”

Steve considers, before closing the door behind him. “It doesn’t have to be about you leaving her. Maybe Morgan just wants to see her dad who hasn’t been home in a while, no matter how important things are. Maybe Pepper wants to see her husband.”

“They’ll be fine.” A few seconds later, Tony ducks his head and shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know what I’d do if I saw them now, before we do all this. I don’t know how I was able to do it before. If I saw Morgan now, would I really be able to leave? Maybe I’d just say fuck it, and then I’d take them and disappear. Way to let everyone down, huh?”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Steve says. “You’ve done so much for us already, you can do something for yourself.”

“That’s what the whole cabin in the woods thing’s for, Cap.” Tony waves a hand. “Or maybe it was, once. When I held Morgan for the first time, I almost forgot how badly I wanted children, and this was a choice Pepper and I had made together. It didn’t feel like it’s something for me, or us, anymore. It’s for her. Even now, the only thing keeping me going through this is thinking about all the kids who didn’t get what she has.”

Steve thinks back to Avengers PR, and Iron Man having a knack for showing up at children’s hospitals. Of course Tony loves children, when Steve’s never felt entirely comfortable around them and their idolatry. But to Tony, they’re the future he’s working so hard for. Steve loves Tony so much in this moment, he’s momentarily stunned by it.

“It’s not a failure to think of your family right now, Tony. That empathy of yours and the drive to do better with it is why you’re here. Love…love makes us stronger. Us as people, and us as a team.” Steve swallows past the blossoming pain, but his heart beats strong and steady. “We trust you, Tony.”

Tony fixes him with a stare. “Do we?”

“Of course. We wouldn’t be here without you. You’re the one who solved time travel.” It’s a weak response after all that, but Steve offers a small smile regardless. He doesn’t think his voice would let him elaborate more right now. “How couldn’t we?”

There’s a small snort from Tony. “Well, I’d never want to let the team down.” Tony shuffles in place, and the rare moment of shyness sends a surge of affection through Steve. There’s a part of him that he knows places Tony on a pedestal, but seeing him like this affirms what he already knows: whatever Tony has done, he’s done through conscious choices, decisions, always moving forward. It’s something to admire. Steve wishes there was a world where they didn’t have to make choices like this, but Tony has this ability to make them and own them. He’s amazing.

“Okay!” Tony rolls back his shoulders. “FRIDAY, open the garage up and get our engine started.”

The smile breaks over Steve’s face at Tony’s barely restrained excitement.

“You know, Cap? You’re right. Take some time to bask in those words, I know they're a treat.” Tony pulls out his phone, before pocketing it. “No wait, I’ll surprise them.”

“They’ll love it,” Steve says honestly. He opens and holds the door for Tony, who almost skips out.

Tony stops halfway out the door and turns toward him. “Steve?”

Hearing his name from Tony, whose eyes are sparkling, and whose face is so close… Steve swallows, and brings a fist to cover his mouth.

Tony tilts his head at him. “Thank you.”

* * *

It still feels surreal several hours after time traveling. He has complete faith in Tony’s abilities, but that’s different from being here. He wonders if Tony and Bruce are feeling the same out-of-body experience he is, before shoving those thoughts are shoved to a back corner of his mind. He’s not here to marvel at the past, when his world was just New York, the Tower, their old selves.

They’re here for a reason, and there are no other options left. It’s only now, after retrieving the scepter and going to meet up with Tony and Scott, that Steve can think of how badly he wants to get out of here.

Then it turns out they’re not getting out of here anytime soon, not without the Tesseract. Steve’s body is numb, heat creeping down his neck and shoulders, like he’s floating. It’s an echo of that day back in Wakanda, after Thanos snapped his fingers.

Tony hadn’t been there that day, though, and Tony’s here now. They’re together and that makes all the difference.

Tony’s words break through the haze, and Steve can focus again, like a switch has been flipped as Tony zeroes in on Plan B. Steve can imagine the gears working with each shift of Tony’s expression, far too fast for Steve to do anything but watch.

“Are you sure?” Steve thinks to ask, and it’s a waste of words. Tony is just as invested in this as him. He wouldn’t throw away their one chance for anything less than bringing everyone back.

“Do you trust me?”

There’s a scratch on the inside of Steve’s throat. I love you, Steve wants to reply, suddenly, the idea overwhelming. I love you more than myself. I’d die for you.

But, he realizes, that’s not the question Tony’s asking. Does Steve trust Tony enough, to lay down not just his life, but the life of the trillions lost? Steve can hand over his own life without a second thought, but the thing about Captain America is that he doesn’t have that luxury of only caring about himself.

There’s so many words to say, but Steve only has to speak enough not to call his bluff. But, he thinks, it’s enough to say what he wants.

“I do.”

Tony takes a little step back, but he doesn’t break eye contact. Like he’s waiting for Steve to retract it. But Steve wouldn’t. He hopes the person he’s become after they agreed to move on has been enough to convince Tony of his unwavering faith in him.

“Your call,” Tony says, offering him another out, as he raises his time GPS, eyes fixed on Steve. He’s giving him an out, but Steve doesn’t want those anymore, not when it comes to them.

Steve raises his arm instead, finger over the button of his GPS. “Here we go.”

* * *

She’s as beautiful as he remembers. Maybe even more beautiful, as the head of SHIELD, a reassurance of her place in the world that she fought so hard to attain. The fierceness and defiance isn’t as prominent, but she’s assured of herself and has as high expectations for her world as she does for herself.

He looks at Peggy, and the ache in his chest lightens. He knows why. It’s what the universe wanted to tell him. Steve’s one of the rare cases of people capable of developing hanahaki disease. Yet, it never manifested until five years back, so what about what came before that? It means that he and Peggy fell in love at the same rate, at the same time. The ideal love, free of the pain of flower language.

The universe is telling him, that he made a mistake somewhere, choosing to sacrifice the perfect love. She had believed in him before he believed in himself. The moment he downed the airplane, he had lost his chance for an idyllic life. He had never been meant to fall in love again, and his sickness is proof of that.

He still loves her. The part of his chest that isn’t weighed down, the part of his throat that doesn’t itch, that can be soothed sometimes, is the evidence.

He thinks of Tony, down in the basement level, trying to retrieve the Tesseract. He has a job to do, and someone to who he owes his life, and most of his heart to. He casts one last lingering glance over at Peggy, before turning his back on his past.

It doesn’t hurt at all to speak the words to his best girl.

“Goodbye, Peggy.”

* * *

They have all the Infinity Stones. They’d succeeded, or rather, no one had failed, not after hearing Clint’s story of Vormir.

But Natasha’s gone. For once, the itch in Steve’s throat is almost forgotten. The pain in his lungs is nothing, not compared to how his eyes burn, and tears stream down his cheeks, and his chest feels like the entire world is squeezing it shut.

Looking over the lake, it’s almost unbearable. He recalls Peggy’s words to him once, of allowing Bucky the dignity of his choice. She had such a way with words, ones that Steve only hopes he can live up to as a leader.

Natasha chose to do this. They’d all chosen to do this, knowing what it could mean. And the only reason was because they damn well thought the payoff would be worth it.

Tony said he’s doing this for his daughter, and Steve had told him that makes him stronger. Steve thinks of his words now, of letting your love for one person drive you to save so many others.

Whatever victory they attain, it has to be worth it. For her sake.

* * *

There’s a jolt in his side, and Steve wakes up. He tries to gasp, but the blockage in his throat won’t let him, leaving him gasping for breath.

“That’s my man.”

Steve gasps as his world comes into focus. The compound, there’d been an explosion, and oh god where’s the gauntlet—

A shield is lifted in front of Steve’s face. “You drop this again, I’m keeping it,” Tony tells him.

Steve looks up at Tony, but he’s just been shaken awake, and his body decides it’s had enough of lack of air, and once he starts, the coughing doesn’t stop.

“Cap.” Tony drops to one knee, resting a gauntlet over Steve’s chest. “Cap, you with me?”

There’s a straw by his mouth now, but Steve’s system isn’t interested in water, although the coughing subsides temporarily as he’s distracted by the idea of Tony having a unit for drinkable water installed in the armor.

“Wasn’t taking any more chances, not after going for three weeks without food. Who knows where we could have been stranded during our time heist.”

Steve accepts the water in the end, but it goes down the wrong pipe and he spits it all over the ground. He’s heaving now, and he can feel the roots taking shape in his chest, the petals opening, eager to bask in Tony’s proximity, his body that’s so close to Steve that every single part of the flower reaches toward him, like they’re growing toward the light.

“Cap!” There’s a thumping on his back. Steve’s eyes fill with tears as he coughs, again and again, body desperate to expel the foreign substance.

He feels the petals prick at the back of his throat. Air isn’t going through his passageway anymore, and he sticks a dirty finger into the back of his mouth. His gag reflex reacts, and what the coughing couldn’t do, the gagging does. The fully-formed daffodil, when it comes up, is covered in spit and blood.

All he can think in shuttered relief is that the flowers grow down the passageway to his lungs and not his stomach, so that he doesn’t have to humiliate himself with vomiting in front of Tony.

The relief makes Steve sag. Tony’s there, arms around his shoulder. Even Steve’s body takes pity on him now, because for these few moments, every lungful of air is fresh and clear and not racked with pain.

Tony picks up the fully formed flower gingerly, which should be an oxymoron with the gauntlets on. Steve can’t bear to look back as Tony’s eyes bore holes into his soul.

“No…You…Steve?” Tony whispers. His voice is so small and frightened, and Steve’s heart breaks.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“No.” Tony shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, for trying to tell you no the first time you tried asking. No wonder you were so hellbent on solving this, telling me about time travel crap. Whatever it takes. You stubborn bastard, you’d never—is it Barnes? Or Wilson? And of course you wouldn’t get the goddamned surgery. You couldn’t move on.”

Every word Tony speaks pushes needles through Steve’s heart. _Tell him, tell him,_ a voice that sounds like Natasha urges. It’s on his lips. Just three words. But Tony doesn’t love him back, and Steve doesn’t know how he can hide from Tony that there’s no curing his illness, whether they bring everyone back or not.

Tony’s breathing hard, and the hand holding the daffodil is shaking. “It’s okay. Steve. That’s the whole point of this whole damned thing. We’ll get them back to you, Steve. I promise. And if they don’t love you back, then I’ll repulsor them myself, you hear me? But first things first.”

Tony helps Steve to his feet. The moment’s passed, Steve thinks. The first time he’d kept a secret from him, it’d blown up. It’d ruined them, the team, the world. Steve can’t do it again, no matter how much it’d make Tony hate him. Tony deserves to know all of Steve, after Steve spent so long hiding himself away.

He’ll leave a message, Steve resolves. After this passes, after Steve disappears and leaves Tony alone again to save his own wretched life, he’ll leave a message, telling Tony he loves him. And if Steve can’t survive this time, after becoming closer to Tony than he’d ever been before, than he’d ever even dreamed of, then he’ll get the damn surgery. He told Tony _together_ , and he doesn’t have to love him to follow through on that promise.

 _This might be the last time I can know I love him_ , Steve thinks, watching the side of Tony’s face. His throat constricts, like his body is physically fighting the idea of it. He wants it to, to fight for one of the few things that makes sense to him in this world.

Steve blinks the tears away as he feels Tony shift beside him. They look over the expanse of the destroyed compound, at a waiting Thanos.

Whatever it takes.

* * *

The funeral’s over, but Steve can’t stop looking over the lake, long after the arc reactor was out of sight. The sunset casts long rays over the water, glittering and orange. Steve’s always been a city boy, but it’s so beautiful, he thinks he understands Tony a little better now. He leans on the railing of the deck in some effort to get closer.

“Captain.”

He turns around to find Pepper. Tony’s widow, and no one would know it from seeing her. She’s elegant. Calm in the wake of tragedy, not like Steve, whose veneer always seems a moment’s away from cracking. From what Natasha would tell him, Steve’s act never convinced anyone.

He remembers how Pepper had smiled at Tony before he died. How she’d waited for the right moment to let out her tears. The way she’s gently smiling at Steve now reminds him of it.

“You left something.” She holds out his handkerchief in her fist. Steve reaches inside his pocket, but it really was gone.

“Thank you,” he says awkwardly. He reaches out, but then Pepper turns her hand over, opening the cloth. Several bunched-up petals fall out, and they watch them together until they settle on the floor.

“I—” He doesn’t know what to say. He’s met her, but always with Tony as a buffer. She’s always been careful with her gestures. Then again, she’s the CEO of a billion-dollar company. Still, she’s simpler to interact with than Tony was. Most everyone is.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“There’s no need to apologize, Steve,” she says gently. “In fact, if there’s anyone who should be sorry, it would be me.”

“What…?” Steve’s eyes snap to hers. She’s still guarded, and distant, but she stays perfectly still as she nods almost imperceptibly.

“But, I’m not as selfless as Tony, so I won’t condescend you by actually apologizing when I don’t mean it.”

She knows. She knows, how and why Steve’s suffering from this disease. Steve’s body grows ice-cold. After Natasha died, this was the one secret Steve had to himself. After Tony died, he would have kept it to the grave. No one ever had to know, but now the one person in the world who shouldn’t have to be burdened with this knows.

“You don’t have a reason to say sorry,” Steve says. Tony loved her, and she made Tony happy. She’s the last person who should apologize.

“You know, Tony would have done anything to help you.”

“Not anything,” Steve says quickly, and then feels like a small, horrible person. How could he complain about not being loved enough, when he’s talking to the love of Tony’s life? “I’m sorry,” he tries again, sounding like a broken record.

Pepper bites her lip, but she doesn’t say anything. He comes to the awful realization that she understands how he feels.

“Whatever he would have done, it doesn’t matter. Couldn’t have been cured from the moment it began,” Steve whispers.

Pepper squints at him, and he can see the realization dawning on her. “Steve, you can’t be telling me that you don’t intend to get the surgery?”

Steve doesn’t know how to respond to that. There’s a whirlwind inside him, and thinking about it stirs it up again, an angry gale inside him. For the first time since her breakdown after Tony died, Pepper’s calm facade cracks. Her jaw drops, and there’s a flush coming to her cheeks.

“But…he did all of this for you too!”

“I know,” Steve finally confesses. “I know that if I just let myself succumb to the disease, that it’ll take everything away from Tony’s sacrifice.” But—he’s loved Tony for so long. His love is an anchor, keeping him forever moored at dock, overlooking the sea and hoping, imagining, the life he was made for. But the sight of the ocean, the sky, the endless horizon, is beautiful enough. Always has been. “But, Tony died so that we could continue to live, and make our own choices. These past five years, running away from my feelings, even though my body was literally telling me I couldn’t do that. That wasn’t living.”

A tear runs down Pepper’s cheek, and her hand covers her mouth.

“But—” Steve’s voice shakes—“but Tony told me once, to get a life. If I don’t, I think he’ll be disappointed in me. I can’t die thinking that. So, I…I’ll try. It’s a good thing he gave me a good example to follow.”

“Steve,” she whispers. She pities him, like everyone else does. Did. But only she understands why. Steve wonders how Sam and Bucky would react. In the end, he’s happiest with Pepper finding out first. She’d understand him the most, and he’s glad, with all the connections he’s lost lately, that he’s been able to form a new one.

“You’re stronger than me,” Pepper says.

Steve thinks that maybe, if he could see himself from her eyes, he’d think the same. But there’s a surety to him. His love is an anchor, that holds him steady. Even if he pulls it up, the weight of it will always be there.

Bucky and Sam don’t deserve to lose Steve. He doesn’t want to say they’d never forgive him. But Natasha would never forgive him, for not moving on when she never had the chance to. Tony never would, either.

“I’ve talked to Bruce. There’s a lot going on right now, but he says that he’ll put me into contact with Helen Cho for a consultation within the next week. We need to have the surgery performed before the Stones can be returned.”

“A few days, huh?” Pepper asks. The wonder in her voice, and there must be a part of her wondering what it’s like, to be able to extricate the feelings that smother everything. For the yawning expanse of grief to end. Steve senses that she’s a practical enough woman to see the benefits of it. She blinks quickly, wiping at a corner of her eye while smiling a private smile with herself.

He knows what her answer is. Loving Tony is worth the pain. All of it: emotional, physical, like a rendering of his soul. It’d be worth his life, part of Steve still believes. But he can’t save Tony. He has to leave Tony’s memory to everyone else who loved him. There’s enough love in the universe three thousand times over for the life of Tony Stark, and what is Steve’s love for him in the face of that?

They stand together, watching the sunset. By the time it’s dark, Pepper gives him a flat disc. Just like the hologram message they’d watched earlier as a group. Much as Tony liked to pretend otherwise, he was a sentimentalist at heart. There’s a disc for each of the Avengers: him, Bruce, Thor, Clint. There’s even one for Natasha, and Steve presses his palms to his eyes to stop the onset of tears.

“Take your time. I haven’t watched mine yet,” Pepper tells him, as she brings him in for a hug.

In the guest room at the lakehouse, Steve has a sudden, frightening thought to crush the device. It’s so fragile, just like Tony’s arc reactor had been so many years ago. He was so scared to hold the arc reactor back then, but right now, he’s just angry.

He doesn’t break it. Of course he doesn’t. He imagines smashing it against the wall, and instead he runs a thumb tenderly over it. Whatever he feels in this moment, it means nothing in the face of Tony’s memory.

With that, he places it gingerly on the dresser, and presses the button and watches it turn on.

 _Tony_ , and that thought crashes through the haze of the last few days. Just like Tony himself would have. _This is it,_ he tells himself. He tries not to think about the future, where the sight of a fuzzy, translucent Tony wouldn’t make his heart swell with fondness. He looks at Tony, and he doesn’t want to forget this. The pain in his chest is nothing compared to the content of his soul, where it belongs. His vision swims, and by the time Tony starts speaking, tears fall freely down his cheeks.

“Cap. I hope it doesn’t have to come to this. Or, I hope if you do have to see this, that the fight’s won. We can go home now, and I’ll be the last one to ever have to call you Cap. That’s one thing I wanted to tell you, if this is the last thing you’ll ever hear from me. The things I have to say…is shorter than I would have liked it to be. Because let me tell you, I have no idea what to say to you, when you’re not right in front of me, radiating all those…team leader, Earth’s mightiest heroes vibes.” Tony waves a hand around and looks to the side. “Team, huh? And I hate to say it. We all found out we’d been working with Hydra unknowingly, and SHIELD was gone. But that little bit, before Ultron. That was a lot of fun. The Avengers gig wasn’t supposed to be fun. We were supposed to finish the fight, and go home. But then I couldn’t be that annoying little voice in your ear. And I know we fight alongside a god, and a genius who breaks the square-cube law when he’s pissed, and we picked up some space cyborgs and Supergirl in the process. But, you made this real, first. You—took charge, like you do, and I felt a little less alone in this vast universe of ours.”

“Look at me, sounding like a TED Talk. Of which I’ve given quite a few. Baring my soul to the world. But that’s not the whole of it. It’s not just about the Avengers, but about you. Your certainty that there’s something left worth fighting for. That hope’s the only thing that got me back into this. That hope’s what going to get me to say this, because I know you, and you’re still holding onto that hope. I forgive you, Steve. I forgave you, a long time ago. Just too proud to say it, and story of our lives, right? At least, I like to think there’s something you’ve been burning to say for me for the last five years. Or maybe something from the time we first met. Maybe you left me a letter, too, in the case our roles are switched and I have to be the weeping widow presented with the bad news. Huh. And, while I’m at it, here’s something I’m sure you’ve never held out hope for, because you’d never expect it.” Tony closes his eyes and takes a deep breath like he’s steeling himself for a confrontation with Steve that could never come.

“I loved you.” Tony shakes his head, laughing at something unseen, and the air is knocked out of Steve.

“No, I love you, as in I need you. Steve. I told you that once, but only when I was so angry with you, with myself, that I might have rather died. The whole world, the entire universe, went to shit, and these last five years have been picking up the pieces. Finding those little bits of happiness that I thought was impossible. And I love my family, Steve, and they’ve made me happier than I ever dared dreamed. And us doing this, together? If you have to see this, then just know, that this here? Is another piece of happiness that I never thought I could have.” Tony raises an eyebrow. “If…if we both make it back, then I’m wiping this, first thing I get. Because now I’ve said it, I don’t want you to feel like you have something to make up to me. Because to have known you and loved you was worth it.”

The hologram cuts off, and it’s like part of Steve’s soul been cut off. He realizes, abruptly, what it is. The crushing pressure in his chest is gone, lifted off with Tony’s final message. His last reminder of Tony, his last gift, that Tony loves him back.

Steve’s sobbing harder now, so much so he can’t even hear his own thoughts percolating in his mind. Thoughts of _what-if,_ or _he never knew how much I loved him back._ Steve sobs with never knowing, the endless expanse of possibilities he’ll never know, he never took, that he waited too long for.

But more than that, Steve sobs with relief, and it shouldn’t feel so momentous.

He can keep this. He can keep this against his chest, and it can mean something to him.

“Thank you,” Steve whispers into the empty room.

Tony Stark had given his life to save an entire universe. But right here, right now, Steve can’t stop crying because in the end, Tony also saved him.

* * *

“I wondered, if maybe you wouldn’t come back,” Bucky admits, the night Steve comes back from returning the stones. It’d been a few hours for everyone here, but a week on Steve’s end. “You’d get your dance, and then.” Bucky shrugs. “Do what you could until the end of your lifetime.”

That possibility hadn’t been lost on Steve. An out, perhaps, after getting the surgery, to be with the woman he was in love with.

“I guess we have Tony to thank for that,” Steve says.

“Stark?” Bucky asks.

“He had a way with words.” Steve can’t stop the smile at Tony’s memory. He doesn’t know if the hole in his heart will ever fully heal, and he’s not prepared for it to. Steve doesn’t have the whole of his heart intact, but he has all the feelings, and that’s enough for him.

“Well, I’m glad we’re both finally back in one piece, in one place. God knows we both need some semblance of stability if we’re going to keep kicking alien ass.”

“Actually.” Steve rubs at the back of his neck. “I was going to talk to you about that, and what you think about Sam.”

* * *

The first person he tells finally answers the door after the third ring.

“Steve!” Pepper pulls him in for a hug. “It’s so good to see you.”

“I passed the shield on,” Steve blurts when she holds him at arms-length, checking him over. “I’m retiring from the Avengers and Captain America.”

Pepper studies him, before shaking her head and laughing. “This is for good, isn’t it? And to think, I spent over a decade trying to get Tony to do what you’ve decided on. But it’s not like any of us could ever change him. You never met him before Afghanistan, Steve, but none of us could have made him Iron Man. Anything he did was all on him.”

It doesn’t hurt anymore for Steve to laugh with her, honest and clear.

“What now, then?” Pepper asks as she ushers him in. “Are you going to help with reconstruction, or I think I heard Tony talking about you doing counseling before?”

“I’ll do what I can, where I’m needed,” Steve says. “But I was thinking of starting smaller-scale.”

There’s a prickle at the back of his neck from being watched. When Steve looks over at the kitchen, he can still see fingers gripping the doorframe even if she’d ducked her head fast enough to avoid detection.

“Morgan, honey, are you there? Can you come here and say hi to our guest?”

There’s a slight shuffle, and Morgan Stark pops out, making her way over to her mother. Morgan’s eyes are wide when she reaches Pepper, holding onto her hand.

“Daddy told me stories about you. You’re Captain America.”

Steve hopes they were good ones, but Morgan’s face betrays nothing but child-like curiosity as she stares up at him.

Steve kneels down. “Not anymore,” he says. “It’s nice to meet you, Morgan. My name is Steve.”

**Author's Note:**

> CNTW: The events of Endgame are largely unchanged: Natasha and Tony still die, but Steve stays in the future. 
> 
> The [tweet thread](https://twitter.com/magicasen/status/1134589642584363008) that started this all! Feel free to chat with me on Twitter or on Discord at magicasen#6819!


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